What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Thursday pm

Suella Braverman goes out with 27 votes this afternoon and Sunak wins, increasing his vote to over one hundred. Mordaunt is second and Truss a pretty miserable third with 64 votes.

But....all may not be as it seems!

Braverman will now allocate her votes (or request them to be allocated at least) to the candidate of her choice, and this is most likely to be Truss....... which would again put Truss up with a fighting chance.

The two bottom candidates (Tugendhat and Badenoch) will now get the weekend to consider if they want to continue (despite their being allowed to) on the basis of their extreme unlikelihood of winning.

Or........

(and here's where they get crafty)

....... they can negotiate with one or other of the higher placed candidates for a position in their future Government in return for pledging their (post standing aside) support.

(NB. This is often the only reason why a no-hoper candidate will stand for the leadership in the first place. It gets them noticed and can even, as I describe above, get them onto the first rung of the ministerial ladder. In a highly competitive place like the House of Commons this can be really.....I mean really.....hard in the face of hundreds of other MPs all wanting the same thing. Being an old failed MP with no ministerial background can be a really soul destroying thing - pure drudgery and no way forward.)

Now Badenoch would pretty definitely throw in behind Truss (Gove would see to that). This would give Truss the edge, but Tugendhat could go either way. It would depend on who would offer him the best deal post winning. But either way, Truss, looking at it from this angle, is despite her currently poor showing, still in with a shout.

Why aren't I talking about Sunak? It's pointless - he isn't going to win. A membership poll today put Mordaunt well clear of him and even Truss considerably above his score.

Arch brexiteer Sir David Frost did a good hatchet job on Mordaunt today by saying that when she worked under him on the brexit negotiations, he had to request her removal because she was "remote and unaccountable". He would, he said, have grave misgivings about her becoming PM.

There should be some kind of televised debate over the weekend I believe - aside from that it's back again on Monday.

[peter]

Truss's comeback is the only story in town as far as this morning's press are concerned. Well, at least it gives the impression that a real competition is underway. But the truth is that, as has been nailed down by Johnson in his private urgings to defeated candidates, it's all about "anyone but Rishi".

Truss or Mordaunt; as I've said, it's all of a one to the membership - they'll vote for either - but for the Parliamentary Party it might be slightly different. The focus of the right of the party is now to get it's core to rally around one candidate, and the best one to serve their needs is deemed to be Truss. Accordingly, influencers like David Frost and Steve Baker have urged people to throw their weight behind her and Frost is in today's papers urging Badenoch to withdraw and transfer her support to Truss in return for a cabinet position. Badenoch says she is not interested, but in reality she will be. A week ago no-one had ever heard of her and now she has a chance to be rocketed up to cabinet level superstardom in one sweep. Her bargaining power is high as long as Truss is insecure - but this could well change if say Tugendhat were to pip her into a deal with the same.

But now, at last, let's talk about the front runner (no-one else is). By now he will have realised that the game is up. For all the adulation heaped upon him by the supporters he had gained (most of them very high level cabinet and ministerial level players) he was never really in with a chance. Boris Johnson filled his cabinet with women and people of colour (hence the make-up of the front-runner leadership candidates) - he had to do something to make himself look progressive in the face of his elitist background and the liberal intelligentsia media - but at its core the party values remain very - well - conservative. Certainly they (the party governing committee) would accept a cabinet full of non white males.....but a leader of colour would, they know, be a step too far for the membership. (In fairness, I have to say that they, both membership and behind the scenes Governors, took, once Margret Thatcher had broken the 'glass ceiling' and taken leadership, very rapidly to the acceptability of women leaders - far better than would have been expected - but Thatcher was a unique individual.....as someone said, "the best man in the cabinet". Perhaps it would be the case that were Sunak to break through in the same way, then that taboo would also be consigned to the dustbin of history - but I'm not sure that he's made of this kind of stuff.)

But in the face of this realisation, what is he to do?

Well, his one and only shot at securing it lies in destroying his opposition before it gets to the membership vote. In order to do this he will have to perform brilliantly - far better than the others - in the televised debates of tonight and Sunday, and as crucially, get both Tugendhat and Badenoch to throw their lot in behind him. He currently holds 101 votes. Getting both of them on-side would give him around 180 votes against Truss's 64 and Mordaunt's 83. Still not enough to prevent a third round vote-off and it isn't going to happen anyway. While Tugendhat would probably back him, Badenoch is very far away from his high tax, almost socialist, outlook. So in reality, unless I'm a Dutchman, he's dead in the water.

But that's about as far as I can take it. The debates are really dangerous territory, especially for the front runners. The trailers have nothing really to loose by going all out, but the front position holders can, by one slip, screw their chances into a ball and throw them into the bin. It is rumoured that Truss is going to go for Mordaunt big-time; she has by accounts been seriously rattled by Mordaunt's rapid rise to snap up what she assumed was her own shoo-in for the second spot against Sunak (from where she knew she would clinch it). Tonight, she will apparently take revenge for this impertinence levied against her. The claws are well and truly out!

(Actually just a few additional words about Truss's campaign against Mordaunt. To date it has been a two pronged attack, and as Mordaunt supporter David Davis has said, pretty 'by the book'. While eschewing public attacks upon her rival herself - and letting it be known that she is doing so for obvious 'high-ground' reasons - she is not preventing her supporters from engaging in such. While she herself is concentrating on her "readiness" to step into the highest office in the land and her record to date, her supporters are fully engaging in a smear campaign against Mordaunt's record in office. Mordaunt, they claim, is unreliable as a Minister, having achieved little while in office. She was, according to Frost often "absent on parade" while she was supposed to be supporting him in his negotiation with the EU. Another Truss ally said she was "utterly incompetent" and likened a victory to her to "a Corbynite take over of the Conservative Party". Blue-on-Blue is thus the order of the day - and it looks to be getting pretty vicious!)

[peter]

I haven't seen last night's public hustings in which the five remaining Tory leadership candidates went head to head yet, but by accounts it was a rancorous affair with no clear winner or looser. Some political commentators are indeed asking if the Tories can ever heal as a Party and come fully back together after this.

This morning's papers tell an interesting story however. Sunak is again ignored - as far as the right wing media (and we haven't got much else) is concerned, he might as well not exist - and all the attention goes to the battle between Truss and Mordaunt. I'm thinking that behind the scenes they know that it is here that the real leadership battle is occurring, with Sunak being pretty much no more than a nod to the optics.

Now you'd be expecting Mordaunt to be mounting a strong repudiation of the tirade of bad-press she has received since emerging as the (true) front runner, and indeed she is, but it is not really cutting through. She has penned an article for the Telegraph and she features on the front page - but the tone of the front page coverage (her article is inside the paper proper) is pretty downbeat. They give full repetition of all of the criticisms of her - that she is ineffective, prone to fantasy thinking, often not willing to engage with the work at hand, and even dredging up an accusation that she was sacked from a former post she occupied in a local council - and do not seem overly impressed with her 'record of achievement' as she herself presents it. The Mail is even more pro Truss, citing her (Truss's) intention to give a "Tax Boost For Families" (the headline) alongside a picture of Mordaunt and a quotation from a former colleague who says that, like her as she does, the thought of her as PM fills her with horror. Certainly there is little doubt who the press want to win this contest between Mordaunt and Truss.

On the other side of the political divide - the other, presumably real, political divide - Sir Kier Stamer has been speaking his thoughts on the matter. Common sense says that Mordaunt would be a bad result for him - after all, their stated policy platforms are identical (unite the country, get rid of sleeze and boost the economy - but he claims that he is ready to take on any one of the five candidates. Privately, they say, he would like Sunak to win, though quite why this would be I'm not so sure. Could it be that he knows that the racist thinking that is more prevalent in the North of this country (they have suffered some of the biggest downsides of immigration, they feel) would gift him back the red-wall seats, the loss of which cost Labour so dearly in the last election. He certainly would never admit to this thinking.

But be this as it may, he certainly would far rather have faced Johnson in the next election. The by election in Tiverton and Honiton result showed just how toxic he'd become, and Stamer will be rueing the Pincer affair, that ultimately brought both Johnson's career and his own chances of winning the next election, down. On the latter I'm about to make another prediction (which I in turn may rue) - I reckon that whoever the next PM is, Truss or Mordaunt, they will hold a snap election very soon after winning the leader's position. This will be for the unspoken reason that they know how bad things are going to get in the next eighteen months. If they let the full electoral cycle of five years pass, then by the time of the election, just how badly they have screwed up this country will be plain for all to see. They would be blown out of the water by the negative effects of their own governance, pretty much irrespective of whoever is offering whatever policies against them. They aren't going to let this happen and so will shout for an almost immediate election, on the claimed basis of "letting the people demonstrate their will" and actualising their mandate. (In fairness, an unelected PM in this country never has quite the authority of an elected one, despite the fact that it is parties that we vote in in general elections, not individual leaders (which are in the gift of the elected party)).

But there it is. I'm hoping that this information is of some interest, in particular that some Watchers from across the pond may find it helpful to understand what the hell is going on in 'the old country'.

Have a good weekend!

[peter]

One of the things that you hear on a regular basis in support of Boris Johnson's disastrous period as PM is that he "got brexit done". It's certainly the thing most cited as the reason that posterity will remember him for - not the parties, the lying (both to Parliament and the country, the blatant disregard for anything approaching honesty and integrity and upholding the dignity of his office.

And of course it's arrant nonsense.

Let's be absolutely clear. Boris Johnson did not get brexit done.

I'm going to say it again in capitals (often considered a rude form of communication on the internet, but I won't worry about that here as it is Boris Johnson we are taking about). So once again....

BORIS JOHNSON DID NOT GET BREXIT DONE.

What he did - and this is fundamentally different - is that he took us out of the EU. He shifted our position from just inside the metaphorical border with the EU (Cameron had already negotiated us to pretty much the edge of where you could be as a nation and still be considered a member) to just outside.

Now I know that many will say that this is playing semantics with the idea - that brexit was and is no more than leaving the EU as an institution, end of - but this is not the case. Exactly the same set of problems now pertain from our new position outside the metaphorical border, as existed within it. It is the resolution of these problems that form the nuts and bolts of brexit. The idea that brexit is simply the withdrawal from the EU itself without a development of where the landing zone is, is like a plane taking off without knowing where it is going to come back down to earth. It is a simplification of a complex process that doesn't render itself cognisant in such terms. It is the place where that plane must land that is more truly brexit than the mere act of taking of.

So don't be fooled by the whitewashing of the true scale of the disaster that was the Johnson premiership. Even in terms of brexit, it was the equivalent of throwing your dog out on the side of the motorway and driving away, rather than re-homing it in a new situation where it would be safe.

Johnson did many things - but getting brexit done was not one of them.

In a century or so's time, when the true scale of the damage that we have done to ourselves as a nation with that massive act of self-harm becomes apparent, can be seen through the lens of history, then the role of the Conservative Party in our demise will similarly be laid bare for all to see.

On a smaller scale, the party are about to inflict further insult to the injury that they have already wrought on the nation. Only a fool could not see the absolute truth in the statement of Rishi Sunak to Liz Truss in the leadership debate, that to think you can put an end to inflation via borrowing is for the fairies. In a time when our borrowing is through the roof (currently at two and a half trillion - about 103 percent of GDP) and inflation is heading towards eleven percent, to even consider increasing the national debt should have concerned colleagues calling for the men in white coats. But this is in effect what the majority of the candidates in said leadership election are suggesting - and unless I'm so far off the mark as to be similarly swivel-eyed, one of them will most likely be elected.

It is so palpably obvious that of the lead contenders only Sunak has anything approaching an idea as to how to tackle this economic crisis (despite being a key participant in its causation) that it hurts. But for whatever reason, because they don't think he's brexity enough, because he's 'too left wing', because he's not recommending immediately cutting tax, because he's Indian - choose your favourite - he will be rejected. That's assuming that the other leaders are genuine in thinking that this crisis can be dealt with by any other means than by a period of getting some revenue back into the coffers. Tax cuts have to be funded - either by a return to the policies of austerity, or by borrowing. This talk of 'shrinking the state' and 'increasing efficiency' is bullshit. If it could be done it would be done by now. Unless what they are suggesting is that a huge swathe of the country be abandoned like untouchables in a sub-continent backwater, then now is simply not the time that this can be done. Either Truss and Mordaunt know this, but choose to put their own advancement over the good of the country - or they are deluded. They are like some hopelessly lost gambler or failed entrepreneur who comes up with some quack scheme to 'turn it all around', to discover a new economic reality that no-one else has ever discovered before.

And the Tory Party membership will swallow it up. Despite every indicator going showing that brexit has been, is, and will continue to be a disaster for this country for decades to come (certainly beyond any of their lifetimes), they will vote for anyone who is prepared to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of some Eldorado style nationalist idyll. The continuance of the 'credit card shuffle' as opposed to simply paying off the frikkin'debt, the bonfire of the regulations instead of the building of the bridges - these are the things that get the membership on board and they will pursue them unto the death and destruction of this country.

You see if I'm not wrong.

[peter]

In a televised threesome, the ongoing blue and blue on blue continued last night in the second of the three live debates.

This time the gloves came off with Truss dumping the blame on Sunak for the pretty soon to be arriving recession and him describing her as a socialist and asking her which she regretted most - voting remain in the referendum or being a liberal-democrat at university. Rounding on what is debatably his main rival, Penny Mordaunt, he said of her economic proposals that not even Jeremy Corbyn had wanted to go that far! (Aside: see how they still use even the name of Corbyn as a derogatory reference. He had more honour in his little finger that the whole lot of them have put together!)

But Sunak did not get all of the running - far from it! In general he was the focus of the criticisms of all the other candidates - one of whom will be voted out today - and was forced to spend much of the debate defending his own policies. Despite this, his performance seems to have been well received by the audience - he topped a poll of the various performances of the different candidates taken immediately after the debate, with Mordaunt coming second. Truss did not poll well, coming fourth, but her poor performance when required to think on her feet and not work from autocue is well known already. Still, looking at today's press, it is a toss-up as to whether she or Mordaunt faces Sunak in the membership vote.

Most likely to depart today is Tom Tugendhat who will pass his votes most likely to Sunak, but possibly to Mordaunt. As he will want to be using his leverage to stay in at the top level after the contest is over, the likelihood is that it will have to be Sunak, which would (I believe) secure his position as one of the final two who are put to the membership vote.

For all I've said, it is entirely possible that I have misjudged the said members and that they are not the bigoted closet racists that I assume them (in the main) to be, in which case he, Sunak, should win by a country mile (on the soundness of his economic thinking). That he might not is down to a number of things. The racist element will always be there. The fact that he i) was instrumental in bringing down Boris Johnson and ii) that Johnson has let it be known that he doesn't want Sunak to replace him. The fact that he isn't promising immediate tax cuts. These things, as they swirl around in the heads of the 160,000 voters who get to choose our next Prime Minister, will be the determining factors, and the balance of which one is uppermost will be reflected in the final vote. I have said that I think Sunak will be roundly beaten because of the racism thing, but perhaps I'm wrong. I don't know if the final voting tally is overseen by any independent observers in what is essentially an internal party vote like this: if Sunak was slaughtered in the membership vote, would the party elders even announce such a result, or would they massage Sunak's vote share upwards in order to hide the brutal truth from the public at large. It would be an embarrassing but revelatory indicator if Sunak were devastated by the membership vote after doing so well in the Parliamentary part of the leadership battle.

I spoke above about the degree of damage that the Torries were prepared to levy on this country in order to pursue their own misguided vision of a Conservative Utopia in England (for that is what matters to the bulk of them, despite the name of the Party that they belong to). This includes voting in a leader, clearly inadequate to the challenges that the nation faces, purely on the basis of his or her perceived vehemence in vocalising that vision, and despite every indicator being that the pursuit of that vision is leading, and will continue to lead us, into disaster.

It beggars belief that Liz Truss for example, was on the front of yesterday's Telegraph, advocating a reversal of the "Stalinist target" of building three hundred thousand houses a year in order to get to grips with our ongoing housing crisis. This kind of target, believes Truss, is counterproductive, and the situation should more rightly be left to the market to address.

With a shortfall in housing running into the millions and countless young families living at home with their parents, unable to find or afford houses, it has been received wisdom on both sides of the political divide that a determined push to build the three hundred thousand homes per year (if rarely ever achieved) was the right policy to pursue. It isn't popular among Tory voters themselves however (which in part probably explains why the same degree of effort has not been placed into meeting the target as was the case in say, dealing with the imaginary pandemic) because the value of housing is determined by the rules of supply and demand, and the more houses there are, the less will be the demand and by extension, the value of existing property. When large numbers of your voting base are second and third home owners (often beneficiaries of the iniquitous buy-to-let scheme), it doesn't do to pursue the target proposed by the policy too vigorously.

But in the world of Liz Truss it is acceptable to let your naked ambition totally overrule any claim to your morality or conscience, and recommend the abandonment of the target to provide homes for people at all, simply because the idea will play well to your greedy voting base. Fewer homes equals higher values on existing stock, and higher rental value for what housing stock is available - therefore it must be a good thing, even if it means that tens of thousands of young families never get their own homes to live in - never mind actually getting to buy one for themselves.

This kind of thinking pervades the Tory Party membership and Truss is perfectly happy to capitalise on it, and even to dress it up as an 'anti-Stalinist' position (as if worry about housing people were something that Stalin ever concerned himself with), as long as it will serve the needs of her own interest.

The election of such self interested individuals to roles that demand you think in terms of the national interest, is the real damage that Conservatives wreak upon the nation. They did it with Boris Johnson, and he in turn filled his cabinet with individuals who were entirely comfortable with this - that national interest was of secondary importance to that of the pursuit of power of firstly the individual (hence Johnson's two-speech approach to brexit) and secondly of the party.

Unless and until we get over this approach and understand thatit is the national interest that should top the list of priorities, that the pursuit of power for no other reason than the holding of power itself is simply not enough, then we will never, never, never get anywhere as a nation. There is nothing whatsoever in any one of the putative candidates for the next Prime Minister, that leads you to believe that they have grasped this simple fact.

[Avatar]

Eh, to be honest, it's all gotten pretty boring now. Kibitzing Johnson's imminent self-destruction was vicariously amusing, but there's no fun in watching the lap-dogs fight for the remains.

Last I paid attention Sunak seemed to be a contender...

--A

[peter]

I have my own views on that Av, but time will tell.

In truth it is pretty boring, even for a politics nerd like me (and also pretty academic - like trying to choose the precedence between a louse and a flea).

I've nailed my description of the winning candidate down in three words - white and right (as in wing). Time will tell if I'm right.

Just to keep the info up to speed however, the vote for the next elimination has been taken and the eliminee (?) will be announced at around 8pm.

After the bruising confrontation of the Sunday night televised debate the final one scheduled for Tuesday has been cancelled. Both Sunak and Truss pulled out citing the reason that the public slanging of off the Government and each other on show was bringing the party into disrepute. Neither wanted any more part in it. It had indeed become a bit of a gladiatorial circus, but both politicians have been accused of being afraid to face the heat for a third time.

[peter]

Okay. So far to plan. Tom Tugendhat went out and now has thirty one votes to donate. If he gives them to Sunak then he assures Sunak's place in the final two. This is the most likely scenario so I'll run with it.

This leaves Penny Mordaunt still holding second place by eleven votes, but with Kemi Badenoch likely to fall later on today (she, by the way, has done far better than I expected) and her fifty eight votes up for grabs, it's still all to play for. If, as seems logical, Badenoch's support was transferred to Truss then we have a Truss - Sunak final vote going to the membership......but Badenoch could suprise us and put Mordaunt into the final two.

On the outside, if Tugendhat were to transfer to Mordaunt then it would be Sunak and Mordaunt facing the membership.

There are other possibilities, but they are so far out on a limb as to be highly unlikely to manifest.

But who knows........

I think that the contest has unsettled all of the Parliamentary Party in its ferocity and they don't much like it. This is a party washing its smalls not just in public, but actively broadcasting the gruesome details as it does so. For the party that has run the show for the last twelve years to openly rip itself apart, expose all of its divisions for public viewing is not, it is felt, wise policy. The party Grandees and executive feel that such business should be conducted in private with the candidates limiting their public commentary to their policies rather than indulging in personal attacks. Hence the reason that the third and final debate was pulled. Such displays of public disunity, while great for their entertainment value, have a disastrous effect on potential donor confidence and the effects are felt in that most important place of all, the party coffers.

Expect a much more restrained contest from this time forward.

--------------------------0---------------------------

As the country swelters under a heatwave, with temperatures getting up near the forties, the question on our minds might be whether this is a natural event, or yet another ramification of our putatively malign influence on global temperatures, what with carbon emissions and everything.

I have not the faintest idea. I'm not qualified to talk about it in any manner. But some things do seem to be clear.

This heat storm, which is uncomfortable for most and positively lethal for a small few (as such heat waves have ever been), is resulting from hot air from the south coming up and, due to the prevailing conditions pertaining in the north as it does so, sitting in a 'bubble' over the country instead of simply dissipating as would ordinarily be the case.

Now I can understand this set of conditions, if you like...... can feel the effects of it - but where I struggle is to make the connection between this and global (man-made?) climate change.

Well yes, if global temperatures are rising I suppose it would be expected that air movements (which I believe tend to move in 'belts' around the polar axis of the planet, due to its spin) would be somewhat more exaggerated as a result, and this unusual movement and then stopping of the bubble of Saharan heat over the top of us could be a result......but could it not just equally be, well, the weather?

Surely in something as chaotic and turbulent as the weather (viewed globally), there are going to be odd times when circumstances not usually seen occur? Could not the fabled heatwave of 1976 be another such instance? Incidentally - I don't remember us getting all fussed up about that one, with the weather maps on television being turned to a blazing red, the international colour of danger, and the forecasters wringing their hands and telling us to 'stay safe'. At that point, as Neil Oliver recently pointed out, the sun was still represented by friendly little sunny symbols on the map, and a spell of hot weather was still a cause for celebration on our grey little isles.

But anyway, the received view as put forward by the meteorological community seems to be that the hot weather is yet another harbinger of doom - not something to be celebrated, but rather something (another thing) to be worried about. A succession of them appear on all channels, saying "We're very worried" (and by extension, though this remains unsaid, you should be too).

Well can I just offer a bit of advice, for what its worth.

By and large, though it no doubt serves as a useful advance warning, worry is a waste of emotion, and never more so than when it is directed at something that you can do nothing about. If you are that worried mr meteorologist, stop driving your car. Stop leaving your lights on, using the air conditioning in your office and the central heating in your home. Stop buying crap from the shops, stop going on holiday with your family and on overseas symposiums (ie jollys) with your colleagues. But if this is too much for you...... and it is for me...... though the collapse of the world economy is making it more likely to be the lifestyle we'll all have to adopt anyway (think about that coincidence).......then stop worrying. Or at least keep it to yourself and let the rest of us carry on in our blind ignorant belief that a period of sunny weather is still what the songs say it to be - a thing to be much wished for. (Bring me Sunshine..... remember.)

----------------------------0----------------------

And as far as electric cars, I've been thinking. It doesn't stack up. There is no way that we can all shift to electric cars by 2030 (or 50 - whenever it is) ......there simply isn't the electricity generation capacity in the country to cope with it. And were we to increase this capacity, how would it be achieved - with wind turbines? Sorry, not happening. It would have to be nuclear power (with all of it's attendant problems of waste) or we'd simply generate more carbon emissions with our electricity generation than we would save in the move away from petrol.

And what about making all of these cars (if we are all intended to be able to have them)? Doesn't the manufacture of billions of new electric cars push out loads of carbon of itself?

And what about charging points. Where is the massive and extensive Government program to build an infrastructure of charge points for us all to use. With the exception of the odd ones here and there in public carparks and supermarket forecourts, I don't see it happening? It's like the Government, well, aren't actually doing anything to prepare for this transition to electric. It's like, maybe they don't actually intend for us all to be driving about in our new electric cars. It's like, that the intention is that the mass of us will have no access to cars, but will be limited to smelly, overcrowded public transport, while only the few will be driving around in their silent, shiny cars, charging them up at the few, carefully positioned charge points available?

But no. To think like that is just plain silly. There's no way our Government would play these kinds of tricks on us - manipulate us into believing one thing, when the other is the case. This isn't how Governments work. They're our Government: they work for us, in our interest. It must be so. They keep telling us that it is so. It must..........be.........so..........

[Avatar]

Electric cars are about saving car companies, not the environment.

As for the weather...yes...extreme events do occur from time to time. Now however, such extreme events are occurring exponentially more frequently. The point for example about the jet streams is that changing temperatures (and the subsequent (and documented) effect on things like air pressure for example) will change the way those "belts" move, with its own consequent effects etc.

I think that it's pretty self-evident (and logical) that our activities have had an effect on the environment. It's not for nothing that we're referring to our current epoch (albeit unofficially) as the anthropocene.

The actual deception / misdirection here is that there is still time to do anything about it. And personally, I think we passed that point long ago already in practical terms. I think we're in that space now between the so-called tipping point, and the cascading results of the changes that we have at the very least sped up significantly.

The two of us may not live to see the full impact, but once the cascades begin, (and they may be beginning now) it can change surprisingly rapidly.

Now, from the point of view of the planet itself, this is not a big deal.

So, we're about 400,000 years (odd) early for the regular mass extinction / die-off. So what? Every living thing on earth today is descended from the 5%-15% of organisms that survived the last one. (The Cretaceous-Tertiary.)

And every organism then was descended from the survivors of the even larger Triassic-Jurassic one. Etc.

From the point of view of everything alive on the planet now, sure...it's gonna suck. Badly.

From the point of view of evolution...that's exactly how it works.



--A

[peter]

Ahhh.....

Stoic to the end Av.




Quick update;

Badenoch (the softer right wing candidate supported by Michael Gove) went out today. This leaves Sunak, still in the lead, with Truss and Mordaunt pretty close to equal behind him.

By any reckoning, Badenoch's votes should go to Truss, putting her clear to win second place in tomorrow's final Parliamentary vote and win her place in the membership vote alongside Sunak.

But it might not be that simple. I saw Gove questioned by Andrew Marr earlier on, and confronted with the suggestion that he was not really a Badenoch supporter at all, but was playing a Machiavellian game to carry her votes at the last minute over to Sunak. He proclaimed his innocence and reiterated his genuine support for Badenoch, but c'mon - this is Gove and you couldn't trust him as far as you could throw an elephant by the tail. He knew that Badenoch couldn't win, so what was his game? Whatever it was, he wasn't saying, but I'm betting that the truth will out before it is all over. I think he only said one truthful thing in the whole interview and that was when he said that he would work in anyone's new government, post the leadership election.

So tomorrow we know the final two. (Or one candidate wins by default because the second placer is so far behind as to make continuing a waste of time - can't see this happening though.)

[peter]

Truss seems to have all the momentum to be the second and final candidate that will go through to the membership vote-off - but nothing is certain.

Accusations are flying around of 'dirty tricks' campaigns in which votes are being 'lent' from one team to another in helping them to get through, because it is perceived that the recipient of the briefly lent votes will be the weaker and easier candidate to beat in the final membership vote.

If the poll released in today's 'i' newspaper is correct, then it would be a waste of time for Sunak's team to engage in such tactics - because let's face it, he's the only one who to date would have had votes to spare for such shenanigans - because he would loose to either candidate.

This pretty much mirrors what I have been thinking - I just don't see the membership getting behind Sunak, and I don't think that they differentiate between Truss and Mordaunt enough to care much which one leads the party. All cats are grey in the dark....unless they are brown.

But it really doesn't matter much anyways. This country is so broken that any PM will be sorely constrained as to what they can do in office. The moment they look at the books, the falsity of the idea that cutting tax can be used to get us out of this jam will become apparent. (I don't think either Truss or Mordaunt believe it can - they are just saying it to tempt the membership, and the membership themselves only care about their own incomes in the short period of time that most of them have left anyway.) Truss would probably leave Zahawi in the position of Chancellor and he would then come to the House saying that Sunak had (in so many words) made such a mess that tax cuts were not possible, so the membership will be screwed over just as the rest of us will be.

And in truth, the British Prime Minister is such a small fry in a big pond that huge international corporations and multinationals have little problems with telling them what they can and can't do anyway. The 'movers and shakers' of this world do not sit in Westminster and haven't done so for a long time.

Anyway, the job of selecting the final two will end today and then parliament will go into the summer recess and the lobbying of the membership will begin in earnest. Truss and Sunak have agreed that (if they are the final two) they will have a live TV debate on the BBC before the final vote sometime in late August. Then the voting and counting will be done ready for the installation of the new PM by the first week of September.

[Avatar]

Ahhh.....

Stoic to the end Av.

Eh, practical big-picture view. Our insistence that that only "right" environment is one in which we ca thrive is rather arrogant and anthro-centric of us.

--A

[peter]

Well I'm no great lover of the human species and have never had much of a problem with the idea that the world would be a lot safer (in terms of its future prospects) if we were to 'leave the building'.

Only one thing (well - one thing, let's say) that I think would be a shame if it were to pass (as it would do if we disappeared), would be beauty. It is one of the things that exists only in the human mind - as emergent from consciousness, if you like - that could not survive our exit. That would be a shame, but for the rest, I think the continuance of life, with its infinite potentials and possibilities, is far more important than the that of humankind, which, unless evolution has stopped in its tracks, is destined to dissapear anyway.

But for the rest, I'm thinking that the world could get along just fine if we were to exit stage left!



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Well we are down to the final two and Truss - I can hardly believe I'm saying it - is now well in the frame to be the next Prime Minister. Yesterday she eliminated the third contender Penny Mordaunt by a slim majority (much to Mordaunt's chagrin and the vocal complaints of her supporters) securing her place in the final vote-off against Sunak.

Looking at the for's and against's of each candidate (from a Tory Party member's point of view) we have..

Truss, who's white, right and has ministerial experience. She'll cut taxes and will kick the EU up the arse. She looks a bit like Thatcher (well - she's the same sex, so we can pretend....) and she's done that thing in a tank like Thatcher did - with that leathery helmet on, and all. Oh, and Boris Johnson wants her to win (as much as he wants anyone, who is not himself to win, that is.)

But......

She's thick as mince. Not at a David Davis (the tory Minister who the accusation was first levelled against) way - I mean, at an altogether different level. She can barely string a sentence together if it isn't on an autocue in front of her and she voted remain in the referendum to boot. She started her political career as a liberal-democrat and seems to have only gravitated towards the far-right of the party (as expedient to the furtherance of her career) of late.

And Sunak? Well he's alright I suppose, but he's Indian..... and we used to rule India didn't we? We used to be the ones telling them what to do..... not the other way around? He's been a Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he's made a bit of a hash of it - I mean, look at the inflation rate, growth forecasts and every other indicator of economic health in the book....

But he's a good going brexiteer - no doubt about that! But will he be as tough on Europe, on immigration, on benefit scroungers as Truss.... And Boris doesn't want him to be PM. He stabbed him in the back - well as soon as that other little snake who looked like an Austin Powers villain - Javid, that was him - got the jump on him and did it first. Yes - he's like the second guy that stabbed Caesar after Brutus, and who remembers his name. But he's a good safe pair of hands.... isn't he? But they are brown hands....... (But old Singh at the corner shop..... he's a good business man isn't he?)........

Oh dear. It's such a dilemma. Brown middle man versus White right female......what to do.......


And so it will go in the next few weeks as the Mail and Express (overtly) and the more 'quality' right wing media (more subtly) steer the membership voters toward Truss. There's only one really interesting development in the last twenty four hours that I didn't see coming; there is a movement afoot to allow Boris Johnson to enter the vote when it is put to the membership. I somehow doubt it's going to be actualised, but apparently 4000 members have joined a push led by Lord Cruddas (a leading Tory donor) for the rules to be changed to allow Johnson back into the competition. "We must not underestimate the sheer indignation amongst members, who are sending emails in their thousands to the Conservative Party chairman demanding a Boris ballot." Well it isn't very likely - but given what we've seen in the past few years that would have also seemed so before it happened, who can say what is and is not possible? It would certainly make things interesting......




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Oh God - I can't believe that I'm about to do this, but I'm about to advance an argument why Boris Johnson should be allowed to be put on as a candidate in the final run-off in the membership vote.

Johnson was elected to the party leadership by a democratic vote of the party membership back in 2019, and was then voted in as Prime Minister by an overwhelming majority in the general election held shortly thereafter. I know that we don't vote in Prime Ministers in general elections - we vote in a party, who then put forward an individual who approaches the Queen with the intention to form a Government (this individual being by convention, the leader of the party voted for in majority by the electorate). But it can be said of Johnson that it is beyond question that, of all general elections held in living memory, in his case it was him personally who was in the public mind when they voted.

There was, therefore, something profoundly undemocratic in the actions of the parliamentary party, in unseating him as leader and thereby as PM. Taken from a public perspective, it was their choice that Johnson be put in as leader, and then endorsed by general election to the office of Prime Minister. Should it not therefore be the public to decide that he should be removed as such? Surely the right thing to do here would be to put forward to the membership, Johnson as an option to resume/retain the mantle of party leader, and for this to then be put to the country, should he win. Would this not be the clearest way for the public, first the party membership, then the electorate more widely, to express its will in respect to Johnson?

I can't stand the blighter - the sooner he disappears into the history books the better as far as I'm concerned - but I do care about democracy as well. And if the public want him so badly (and I don't think that they do, at a national level, and I believe he'd be slaughtered in a general election, despite what the Tory membership may want) then let it be demonstrated at the ballot box.

Were Johnson to be allowed to stand in the forthcoming membership vote for party leader and win it, I think it would be beholden on him to then put it to the country - current circumstances would demand this, despite what convention and constitution would say on the matter - for ratification.

It would be a step away from how we ordinarily do things - a bit too close to a move towards a republican style of thing (presidency and all that) for my liking. But the PM can call an election when he likes, and given the strange and unusual circumstances that have brought us to this pass, I think it might be the best way of getting our democracy back on track via a clear expression of the will of the people via a renewal of the Tory Party mandate (or otherwise).

[peter]

Inflation through the roof, the economy moribund and interest rates up to historical highs and it's all about tax. Migrants crossing in boats, dying in the Chanel, the asylum system groaning under its inability to process the numbers and policies of deportation and hiving away the problem to other rather questionable countries, it's all about tax. Crippling labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, the care and transport sectors, but it's all about tax. The passport, driving license and just about every other administrative agency in the book failing, the NHS crippled and on its knees, looming food shortages and delivery supply chains crumbling and it's all about tax.

One wants to give away tax monies in a splurge that would drive the country yet deeper into the morass that we find ourselves in because it's what the 0.3 percent of the population that choose our next Prime Minister want to hear. The other wants to continue the policies of high tax and an effective return to austerity in order to balance the books and restore order from the chaos that he himself has overseen the development of.

But let's face it, the boots could just as easily be on the opposite feet. Had Sunak not been the Chancellor who was forced to go into an orgy of money printing and borrowing in order to get the population of the country to sit at home being paid to do nothing (they never would have worn it if they hadn't been given eighty percent of their wages - there'd have been millions out on the streets tearing up the flagstones), he'd be sitting in the Truss position screaming for tax cuts along with the rest of them.

If Truss had been the one, staring ashen faced at the books and realising that the country was screwed - literally done for - unless it somehow got the gazillions of pounds being splurged on interest payments servicing the debt under control, if she'd been the one trying to fight the octopus of inflation back into the box from which it had escaped, then she'd be the one urging prudence and restraint, she'd be the one knowing that she'd bent the country over and shafted it where it hurt, and nothing but a good bout of cold-turkey would now sort it out.

But this is how it works. Having been the Chancellor and not the Foreign Secretary, it was Sunak that had to get the people to submit to effective house arrest (they did so because they all stayed at home on eighty percent in the hot summer days drinking and having barbecues - I know, because I was at work selling them the booze and charcoal), and now that the consequences of this bit of cajolery are coming home to roost, he wants to try to try to get a handle on things before we go into an irreversible economic death-spiral. Think Zimbabwe.

Truss, as Trade Secretary and latterly Foreign Secretary, had no such concerns. Seeing as brexit had pretty much done for trade and the pandemic for the necessity of foreign affairs (all gazes were turned inwards), she didn't actually have much to do, though she has sold some pork trotters and tea to China and butter to (lactose intolerant) Japan. So she is ideally placed to now start leading with the Tory Party anthem, whose cheering lyrics are easy to memorize because there's only one line, "Tax cuts, Tax cuts, TAX CUTS!!!", and that, as you'll have noticed, has only two words.

So don't be surprised at the different positions that the two candidates are taking. How could they be anything other? Sunak can hardly suddenly go against the policies that he himself has put in place, to clear up the mess that he himself has caused. Truss can hardly do other than revert to Tory type, to talk to the membership in the only place where they are interested - in their wallets - and so it is. And so it will go until the next ineffective PM marches out of the door of Number 10 to proclaim that they are"governing for all the people", that they are here to, "bring the country back together'', with one hand firmly tied behind their back, and the fingers on that firmly crossed as they say so.

[Avatar]

Urgh, I can't believe Truss is suddenly looking like the likely winner.

I guess "white" trumped "man."

Personally I think Sunak would have been the lesser of the two evils, but what do I know...

--A

[peter]

I've said before Av - it's like discussing the precedence between a louse and a flea (and about as profitable ).

The mornings papers are an absolute example of the bullshit hypocrisy we are spoonfed on a daily basis in this country.

Half of them are groaning and blaming the French for the chaos at our boders as people in their millions try to flock across en masse for the summer break. What the fuck did they think that brexit was going to result in? I saw only one comment, from the guy who runs the Channel tunnel, who actually called it straight. We are now operating as a country outside of the EU, he said. This is how it is - get used to it. (I said as a by the by, during the pandemic, that the powers that be would never allow mass travel to go back to what it was, that the opportunity to curtail it was too good to miss. If I was a cynical man I might think that this chaos is almost a part of "the plan" and that the more difficult it is to cross borders, the more unpredictable your flight plans are in terms of likelihood of last minute cancellation, the less likely you would be to do it..... but this would be too much to suggest wouldn't it. )

The media not concerned with the travel chaos are looking to the leadership battle. In the Telegraph Liz Truss seems to think that she is Prime Minister already, issuing instructions to the French to "get your act together!" and sort out your staffing issues (in so many words). She seems to be trying to create the impression that she is already in the driving seat in all but name, and the raising of her to the actual office is a mere rubber stamping operation.

Sunak for his part, having blasted the remain campaign for using the tactic (actually, it turns out it was simply'project truth'), seems to be indulging in a bit of fear mongering of his own. We are he tells us, on the verge of a national emergency. Everything is going to hell in a handcart. (You don't say Rishi! ) As the only person who can fix things, he would upon taking office, announce crisis management on five areas of the national operations (think the economy, the NHS, transport and travel etc) in order to restore.....errr.....order. What he seems to have forgotten is that he has been embedded up to his armpits in the fucking shit-show shower that has brought about the crisis in the first place!. Twelve years your lot has had the running of it Rishi and here we are. Am I the only one who can see the (God, I can't even think of the word for it - someone help me out here).... insult, irony, hypocrisy, sheer legerdemain and 'glamour' (in the original sense of the word) of suggesting that you are the only man for the job of sorting out this emergency when you were amongst the lead candidates for having fucking caused it in the first place!

God save us from these fucking people!

What we need in this country is reform, reform reform!

Any new Government that comes in on any other basis will be just a continuation of what we have had already. The Tories have fallen into the Platonic trap of oligarchy, of the circular merry-go-round of money feeding power, feeding money feeding power. Thus is democracy being rendered futile. We are so deep in the shit we are in danger of drowning.

The road out of this will begin with electoral reform. The abandonment of the first past the post system in favour of proportional representation. This will result in an absolute limitation of the power of Government to abuse its remit. Some will argue that this brings weak Government, with a tying of their hands in terms of what they can achieve. I say good! We have seen what Governments can achieve when given a free run at it - we're fucking living it every day! It's staring us in the fucking face, like looking down the barrel of a shotgun!

Let's get this shower of crap out into the dustbin where they deserve to be, vote in someone new for a fresh start and try to get this thing back on track.

I'll tell you now. I'll never vote for another party that doesn't run on a platform of immediate electoral reform ever again!

[peter]

When Mrs Thatcher shifted the then 'Overton window' to encourage us to bring the privatisation of our core utilities into the public discourse, the argument ran that the nationalised industries would be run better, more efficiently and to the greater public advantage if placed in the hands of the private sector, with profit driven efficiency and competition being the underlying driver that would bring about this transformation.

It was of course total bollocks and the proof of it is there for all to see today.

Last night at work, I listened to our local radio station as I swept the shop, and heard a plaintive advertisement put out by my water supplier almost begging us not to use water for anything other than drinking or essential washing etc. The few days without rain we have had (now ended as I look out of the window this morning) has reduced the water in our reservoirs to critically low levels to the point where rationing and hosepipe bans cannot be far away. Never the once, did it occur to the company that the rising population would place greater demands upon the supply needs of this resource, and that instead of shovelling money into the pockets of their shareholders, their responsibility was rather to invest profits to meet the future demand, in the form of investment in greater storage and processing capacity. The situation is mirrored up and down the length breadth of the country.

In today's papers, we are told that National Grid, the privatised company that runs our electricity supply network, has been forced to go cap in hand to Belgium, begging for additional supplies via the Nemo cable, after failing to secure sufficient advance supplies to keep the country's lights on during the dark days of next winter. I could tell them not to bother - that none of us will be able to afford to put the lights on by the time of winter anyway, but that is not the point, which is rather, that it is their responsibility to ensure that we have sufficient supply to meet our needs, and if we have not done so then they have failed in their remit.

Need I even go on to the rail services? The confusion brought about by the initial privatisation in which the existing nationalised service was broken up into regional companies (with track maintenance and rolling stock going to yet separate companies again from those who ran the routes) has never been overcome. Here and there profits are made which are immediately skimmed off for the shareholders, while travellers are crammed into ever more cattle-car like waggons and forced to make journeys in wretched conditions that, were it actually cattle being transported, would have the RSPCA down on the company heads quicker than you could say "trial proceedings instigated".

There may be instances out there where the much vaunted efficiency of the private sector has resulted in benefits to the public, but I can't think of them. In the NHS, where privatisation has been slipped in through the back door in the form of 'outsourcing', increasingly the companies who won tenders by pitching so low that they could not begin to provide the required levels of service, are finding that they are not worth the trouble. In my wife's hospital where she has worked for forty years, the company who run the cleaning operation has thrown in the towel and handed back the service to the hospital trust. In every quarter they had failed to meet their efficiency targets and had been fined for so doing. They pulled back on the cleaning regime whereby floors, which previously had been 'stripped' of polish and deep cleaned (before re-polishing) on a fortnightly basis, carrying out the procedure only twice yearly, and they wonder why the place is boiling with infection? The same story is found wherever the outsourcing companies are involved. They do the job in a half-arsed fashion for the five years that they hold the contract for, they cream in the money that they are paid by the government for doing a proper job (which they never even try to do) - and then they throw in the towel and move on to another outsourced job in another of the government paid areas, to cream in another five years worth of revenue for their shareholders. It's great business for them and public services go to shit (and the Ministers who award the outsourcing contracts get positions on the boards paying fat salaries at a later point: it's win-win..... except for the public).

So this is why we should sit down and have a rethink. These public infrastructure services - power, transport, health and increasingly internet/communication services - do not lend themselves to the privatised model. They are simply too important to be placed in the hands of private interest where the profit incentive will always trump the public need. Thatcher was wrong. You can see it now in the headlines in our papers nearly every day. Time to get these utilities back under the public umbrella and begin to reverse the damage that decades of Thatcherism have wrought on our public services.

[peter]

So Rishi Sunak has a plan does he, to reverse the decline into the "state of emergency" that he conveniently forgets that he was part and parcel of bringing about.

Well I've got one as well - and I'm betting it's a good deal better than his!

One - get us back into a position where we can address the problems of labour shortages and restrictions to trade by immediately - immediately getting us into negotiation with the EU to rejoin the single market and customs union (the one thing that Thatcher actually did get right - see above). This would have the additional benefit of wiping out the problems of the Northern Ireland Protocol overnight.

Two - break the comfortable merry-go-round of money and power that is wrecking our democracy and providing a revolving door between politicians and business. Do this by banning all political donation other than those received via standard party membership fees. Tighten up the declaration of members interest rules and the proscriptions of second jobs in which MPs and ministers may engage, and most importantly of all, bring party funding under the umbrella of the state and outlaw any funding other than that provided by the mechanism instigated.

Three. Break the single party domination that we are currently 'enjoying', by the reform of the electoral system into some agreed kind of proportional representation in which people are represented in proportion to the success of their position via the ballot box.

Four. Begin as of day one, an immediate policy of reversal of the privatised utilities, bringing them back into public ownership as prior to the privatisation era of the nineteen nineties. Stop all outsourcing of state responsibilities to private companies forthwith.

Five. Reform of the process of election to the second chamber, making the sale of honours a criminal offence. Simultaneously outlaw the practice of 'stacking the Lords' with candidates favourable to the incumbent administration and reform of the whole system, possibly with the creation of a second elected house, with real power to oversee and adjust legislation in the public interest, where necessary.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Rishi!

[Avatar]

Well, to be fair, state ownership of utilities has not worked out particularly well for us here in the long term...although, also to be fair, that's largely because the state went from serving only a small portion of the population (at the expense of the rest) to being a vehicle of personal enrichment for a lot of people who, effectively, ran the SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) into the ground in their quest to make themselves a lot of money without regard for the wider consequences.

(For a second I thought you were saying that was his plan...unfortunately (for you) I realise it's yours...should have guessed since it seemed eminently sensible. )

Also, good luck on the electoral reform stuff...I suspect you won't be voting for a long time, if ever again.

--A

[peter]

I suspect that you are right Av - although the Lib-Dem party are keen proponents of voting reform and there is a possibly interesting development in the unlikely combination of ex Tory MP Rory Stewart (who I have great respect for) and ex Tony Blair press secretary who have joined forces and are toying with the idea of the formation of a new centre ground party. Boy is there room for one (though it begs the question as to why the Lib-Dem's cannot rise up to fill this vacuum as the natural occupiers of this space).

Also the Green Party are pretty on-side for electoral reform.....but I do have issues with some of their other policies (though not the environment ones by and large).

Going back to my list above, the introduction of a flat-line tax system, doing away with the banded system we currently have to be replaced by a single rate payable on all earnings (above the current minimum thresholds). No more tax avoidance, stashing money away on offshore tax-havens and such. You earn it - you pay it. This would be hand in hand with a tightening up of the non-dom status rules and strict enforcement of the rules relating to residency in respect of tax payment.

But enough fantasy stuff, and back to reality.

In an impassioned return to work following a two week holiday, James O'Brien yesterday concentrated on his morning show, on a few clips of brexiteer politicians speaking during the referendum, in which they touched on matters directly pertaining to the chaos at the port of Dover seen (and warned about during said referendum) in the past days.

We had Jacob Rees-Mogg adamant that there "will be no hold-ups at the port of Dover. Any hold-ups will be on the Calais side. Dover will run freely, as will the traffic in the town and surrounding area". (There is suddenly no comment in the papers from the worthy member for the seventeenth century - he seems to have lost his plummy voice of a sudden.)

Then we had Priti Patel telling us how, as Home Secretary, the responsibility fell to her to, "End, once and for all, the free movement of people across our borders!". Well - she said it! And she certainly achieved it this last weekend! Trouble is, people who voted brexit didn't actually understand that it applied to them: that it was their free movement that would be curtailed. What, as O'Brien expostulated, did they expect? That suddenly the closed borders would evaporate when they went through? That there would be no checks on them as they crossed into what was now, a completely different zone?

Then we had Dominic Raab telling us that far from being impacted by our leaving the EU, trade across the border would be enhanced! No mention of the fifteen percent fall in his thinking then.

O'Brien went on to question how it was that these people could not see what seemed clear as day to the rest of us, that exactly the situation we have seen in the last few days at Dover would result. That the erection of a new closed border between the ports of Dover and Calais would slow things down and create endless problems in terms of just-in-time supply chains, the fast export of fresh produce, the volume of holiday traffic crossing the border. He was far more forgiving of these people than I am, putting their having got it so palpably wrong down to innate stupidity. They just didn't understand, he said, what they were talking about. And yet they remain in office, blithely carrying on in the complete ignoring of the facts of their egregious failure to see the blindingly obvious. How could this be, O'Brien asked, that we have fallen so low that people who were so clearly incapable of seeing the obvious, are simply left to remain in place to compound their mistakes, to carry on wreaking havoc in the wake of their misunderstandings.

I think O'Brien has it all wrong.

I think that these people knew exactly that what they were saying was bullshit! It wasn't that they didn't understand - it was that they didn't care! People like Mogg were perfectly prepared to see the country brought to ruin on the back of short term gains (in things like playing the currency fluctuations markets) for themselves. The queues at Dover were a matter of complete indifference to them. They would not be affected by such chaos - they'd never be sat in a car for seven hours with a backseat full of screaming kids. It simply did not impinge upon them. Patel at least was honest that she intended to end free movement - it just was not the free movement that people thought it was!

And now we have our leaders saying that this chaos is all the fault of the French! It's those perfidious French wot are doing it! They aren't manning the booths and working to full capacity in order to meet the increased holiday demand. They are doing it out of spite because we left the EU!

This is seriously the line that our Government is taking (via the comments of Liz Truss and the MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke. I mean, what the frick have the French got to gain by such a policy? It's rubbish! This is simply what the consequence is of imposing a new layer of checking on an infrastructure that was not designed to deal with non-free movement across a border. Yes there was a brief delay (of about three hours) when due to an accident, some of the French border staff were held up and prevented from reaching their stations - but they soon got into position, yet the backlog and queues remained. Our Government warned that similar delays are likely every weekend across the whole summer period. What - have they got a crystal ball, and can see accidents holding up the French staff every Friday and Saturday? Or is it that their blaming of it all on the French simply wasn't true? That the reality is that this is the very chaos that everyone and his mother who had half a reasoning brain could see coming, but that they are never going to admit to being the case as long as they have holes in their arses.

And this is the problem. Not just with the politicians, who, lets face it, have every reason to cover up their blunders or dishonesty (take your pick). But with the people who were duped into voting for brexit themselves, and for whom now, the complete and utter fiasco they have endorsed is plain for them to see like a turd held before their very eyes. Because they will never admit it! In a month of Sundays you will not find them conceding an inch, that they may have got it wrong. They have simply too much invested in having made their choice. They could not admit to having made the wrong one, even if they wanted to. The damage that their decision has wrought on the country is simply too great to allow for this. They have destroyed the future of generations of their families, their countrymen, to come. How can they admit to this - even to themselves. It is too big an ask.

And so we will go on, blaming the French, blaming the remoaners, blaming the immigrants. Blaming everything and everyone but ourselves for the disaster that we have created, of which the chaos at Dover is but the tiny visible tip.